A Lesser-Known History of How Nature Does Mass Immunization A Whole Lot Better Than Us!

DEDICATION

to

All Parents Past, Present & Future

INTRODUCTION

…the more you know about the past, the better you are prepared for the future.

~ Theodore Roosevelt ~

The direct quotes given throughout this study - augmented by original mortality data compiled and edited by A. Parent, reveals a lesser-known history of the dramatic decline in deaths from a whole plethora of pathogens that once plagued our developing nations and its probable cause. I.e., a natural universal biological phenomenon of ancestrally acquired robust resilience to dying from once deadlier contagions throughout the generations.

The significance of this being that, whilst our health officials are expecting the plagues of old to return at any moment and are poised nervously armed with whatever vaccines they can throw at them, it would appear that our immune systems having very long-term ancestral memory have not forgotten how to battle against such opportunistic invaders of the past and it now looks highly likely that almost all of us would survive even if some of the deadliest contagions returned today to plague us in their original colours.

This, therefore, also has implications for our more modern and firmly entrenched belief that we eradicated at least some of these bugs and, obviously, with our current mass vaccination strategies that are so firmly entrenched and becoming near-universal, we are not currently following nature's schedule of childhood natural immunization as a result. Thus, we assess the consequences of this situation in the context of the above.

In essence, after reviewing all the relevant evidence for when, how and to what degree we have attempted to protect against infectious diseases at a population level versus nature's method of full exposure, this study reaches the inescapable conclusion that Nature has done a significantly better job of natural mass immunization down through the generations and across the entire world in line with our respective levels of development, a whole lot better than us.

The moral of this story is that it looks like our ancestors were counting more of their descendent children (that's us) because they had the (actual) Pox and just about everything else going in the way of infectious diseases and we were healthier as a result. That was until we began to intervene in the natural generational immunity cycle - but, the protection afforded by our mass vaccination efforts being so short-lived - ironically, maybe helping to restore this remarkable immunization cycle once again.

All in all, it is hoped that this study will go some way to alleviating our unnatural phobia regarding the germ or pathogens of old returning, and go some way to restoring our faith in Nature so that this may inform a more natural health focused future.

PART ONE

Silent Carriers of Natural

Immunization?

-1-

Trojan Contagion

Our history books since the time of the Great Plague are full of dreadful descriptions of what, all too often, happened when indigenous peoples first encountered colonizers. Typically, this resulted in entire communities almost being completely wiped out by coming into contact, for the first time, with these highly unfamiliar invaders - I'm talking about the pathogens these colonizers were carrying within them to these new lands from the old world.

Now bearing in mind that for the most part, these indigenous peoples would have been some of the healthiest, nutritionally enriched and naturally pristine populations - at least, prior to such unexpected invasions. This, therefore, suggests that they were entirely defenceless and no amount of good natural health could protect them against the horrors to come.

Indeed, they couldn't even foresee what was about to descend upon their shores, as the European explorers and colonizers often looked rather well-fed and positively healthy themselves. This observation is noted by Charles Darwin - the great evolutionist whilst on his adventures to the South seas in the Beagle as republished in, Bergfeld, A, Bergmann R. and Sengbusch, P.V. (2004), in the following:

Australia in 1836

The Rev. J. Williams, in his interesting work, ... says, that the first intercourse between natives and Europeans, is invariably attended with the introduction of fever, dysentery, or some other disease, which carries off numbers of the people.

Again he affirms, It is certainly a fact, which cannot be controverted, that most of the diseases which have raged in the islands during my residence there, have been introduced by ships... and what renders this fact remarkable is, that there might be no appearance of disease among the crew of the ship which conveyed this destructive importation.

This statement is not quite so extraordinary as it at first appears; for several cases are on record of the most malignant fevers having broken out, although the parties themselves, who were the cause, were not affected.

Darwin, C (1839, CHAPTER XIX)

[1]

In this, Darwin gives us a clue to the ease of the spread of devastating contagions to infect unsuspecting fresh new victims like Trojan Horses - deadly, but silent carriers of death and destruction. Classic examples are further documented across in the other side of the world from the historical archives and summed up in the next historical overview of such foreign invasions; only this time, we begin to get a sense that these same Europeans may have also been, unwittingly, the carriers of ultimate immunization.

Rationalizing epidemics: meanings and uses of American Indian mortality since 1600

Europeans encountered new populations, in Hispaniola and Mexico in the 1500s, in New England and Quebec in the 1600s, and even in Alaska and the Amazon in the 1900s, they witnessed terrible mortality.

Epidemics of smallpox, measles, and influenza took the highest toll. These diseases, endemic in Europe, had not been present in the Americas before European arrival.

Europeans, exposed as children, developed immunity that protected them as adults. American Indians, without this immunity from prior exposure, and stressed by the chaos of European colonization, were dangerously vulnerable. They died in great numbers...

Jones, D.S. (2004, 26)

[2]

As the article excerpt above begins to reveal, apart from the initial devastation and the great number of deaths due to the indigenous peoples previous lack of exposure to such infectious diseases carried by the Europeans, the fact that the European's themselves appear to be relatively immune - due to so much exposure - particularly whilst growing up - to these same pathogens, does that mean that the native peoples would also become immune to dying themselves and go on to survive in larger numbers thereafter, just as the Europeans had?

The following science article excerpt certainly points to the fact that they may have very likely done just that.

Immune Aspects of First Contact Epidemics

Isolated island populations were clearly subject to disastrous outcomes when new infectious diseases were first introduced, but this often did not extend to subsequent epidemics by the same pathogen...

Mathematic models make it clear that whatever the reason the extreme mortality rapidly decreased after the first-contact epidemics on Pacific islands, it was not due to Darwinian selection of disease-resistance genes. The time interval of only 2–3 generations is simply too short to involve such putative disease-resistance genes.

Shanks, G.D. (2016)

[3]

This resilience to dying from initially deadlier contagions (immunity due to exposure and familiarity down through the generations) within such a relatively short timescale - perhaps two or three generations., is of particular interest in the light of Charles Darwin himself whose theory in its genetically updated form cannot account for such a biologically speedy adaptation according to the above excerpt.

Now, taking our cue from this study, we find as we dig deeper into the historical archives, good confirmation of the fact that not only did the Europeans go on to survive such plagues of old, but, indeed, so did just about everyone else across the world - it was just a matter of how many generations they had been exposed and became familiar or, refamiliarised under more natural circumstances to the bugs.

This dovetails closely with one highly respected historian on the matter, William McNeill in Plagues & Peoples (1976) [4] in which, he describes, not only the likely cause of the initiating factors that ignited such raging pandemics that became a dominant theme of the past few hundred years across the old and new worlds but also how these same plagues stopped causing such devastation and ultimately appeared to fade into the mists of time.

For instance, McNeill suggests that due to unprecedented new opportunities for pathogens to spread like wildfire amongst burgeoning urbanised centres, to now travel along trade-routes that penetrated deep into even the most remote hinterlands, which was further enhanced by the ever-shrinking world of pan-continental mobility, that these circumstances created the perfect conditions for such opportunistic pathogens to gain a never before witnessed foothold across entire continents with such initially devastating mortality.

In other words, it seems to me that one could, therefore, suggest, that the initial and devastating spread of many infectious contagions across far-flung continents and remote islands was not so much the result of Nature's random culling mechanism (selection and survival of the fittest) but, more to do with the fallout of our human created and the unintended consequences of growing, expanding and populating the world perhaps a little more rapidly than Nature could at first keep up with - or, the birth pangs of accelerated modernity?

Now, McNeill also suggests that throughout a few generations, these same pathogens appear to have become avirulent (less-lethal at a population level) or, what could be called attenuated (suggesting that they became weakened due to having passed through so many hosts). In effect, an accommodation between host and pathogen appears to have been reached due, to what could be called a natural immunization process.

And, if we go with this compelling explanation of both the rise and demise of some of deadliest plagues known across humanity, in many ways, we could say that the Europeans, or inhabitants of the Old World, who were seemingly once just as naïve before they, themselves became immune due to exposure over a few short generations, may have helped colonize more than previously unheard of new lands and ended up inadvertently immunizing just about every corner of the now known world as a result.

This brings us to a few historical examples, focussing upon the Irish record in particular that, when placed in the broader historical context of what was going on elsewhere, should begin to reveal the natural immunization effect in action.

-2-

Cholera, the Disease that Inspired Bram Stoker's Macabre Aspects of his Novel 'Dracula'!

Now to give you an idea of how deadly Cholera once was in Ireland, (and indeed, as you will see as we proceed, just about everywhere else throughout our shrinking world), the following should give you a sense of what it was like for Irish people on the ground during its first and worst eruption of the early 1830s as revealed through the stories that Bram Stoker heard from his mother.

The Sligo epidemic that stoked Bram's interest in all things

Stoker's mother, Catherine Thornley, came from Sligo town, and witnessed at first hand the devastating cholera epidemic that swept the county in 1832. Bram -- or Abraham, as he was christened -- would avidly listen to Catherine's sobering accounts of what she had witnessed in Sligo before he was born…

And Stoker experts believe Catherine's vivid descriptions of the suffering she had seen stayed with young Stoker and helped fuel his macabre novel later on in life…

it struck with a brutal swiftness.

A farmer was infected as he mounted his horse on one side of the town and was dead by the time he reached the other. Another man who attended the funeral of an employee in the morning became ill during the burial and was dead by evening. One family saw six of its members die in the course of a single night.

The death rate was so rampant that carpenters ran out of wood for making simple coffins and the dead had to be wrapped in pitched sheets and rolled into mass graves. Local legend has it that some people were buried alive, so great was the haste to dispose of the corpses...

The events of 1832 would scar Sligo for generations...

Meagher, J., (Independent, Apr., 22nd 2012)

[5]

This account may help us get a sense of Cholera's initial impact upon our unsuspecting little nation; that may not have been that different to how the indigenous peoples of the new worlds may have felt perhaps?

You see, we know that this Cholera eruption was not confined to a single county in Ireland, but the entire nation as revealed through the mortality statistics documented in the following excerpt.

...Fever and Public Health in Pre-Famine Ireland

It is difficult to get an overall picture of the effect of cholera on the country. The Cholera Board compiled statistics of the numbers of cholera cases and deaths and the 1841 census recorded that 46,175 died from cholera in the period 1832 - 4...

O'Neill, T.P., (1973, 21)

[6]

More than 46,000 deaths from Cholera over the few years of the national epidemic, is likely to be greatly underestimated according to O'Neill (ibid). This same study, as excerpted in the following, also clearly shows that Cholera's lethality was not just confined to Ireland, but, was also felt worldwide - in a pandemic fashion - causing millions of deaths in its wake.

...Fever and Public Health in Pre-Famine Ireland

...cholera... was sweeping across Europe... Petersburg was ravaged in 1829, the German towns in 1830 and the first case in England ...1831...

What made cholera so terrifying was the high mortality rate of those infected. In Ireland, of those who contracted the disease in 1832, roughly 40 per cent died and the death rate in places was as high as 76 per cent...

O'Neill, T.P., (1973, 16)

[7]

And we should also bear in mind that, it wasn't poverty or starvation that fueled this devastation of the first and worst pandemic Cholera tsunami as it was felt across much of the known world at a time when, presumably, our respective populations were just carrying out their relatively peaceful and prosperous commercial transactions as that witnessed within the bustling Irish town of Sligo before being hit by this most devastating contagion.

This becomes all the more perplexing when we consider the significantly reduced mortality resulting from the next major pandemic Cholera wave to hit our shores during the late 1840s, which, just happened to coincide with the greatest social and economic disaster ever recorded across this small island - the Great Irish Famine and there was nothing great about it.

Now, of course, being impacted by Cholera or any infectious contagion at this time certainly didn’t help our already beleaguered nation, however, the available data that we can assess which corresponds to the era leading up to the main famine years, reveals some rather surprisingly low mortality figures as presented next.

Famine Disease and Famine Mortality: Lessons from the Irish Experience, 1845-50

… the census reported a total of 1,376 cholera deaths in the years 1841-47

(plus a further 2,502 in 1848).

Mokyr, J., and Ó Gráda, C., (1999, 7)

[8]

This extraordinary tameness of the second Cholera pandemic wave of the late 1840s, even allowing for the fact that this Cholera mortality data doesn't cover the entire span up to the end of the Irish Famine, it still stands in stark contrast to the significantly greater number of deaths from Cholera in the first pandemic wave of estimates of around 46,000 with a case fatality rate as high of 76 per cent less than two decades earlier when our population was a whole lot better fed and not hanging over the precipice of near extinction.

But, alas, we pulled through - only to be hit by the third pandemic wave of 1854. Now, this, as it turns out was the second last to hit (penultimate wave), and although we have very little in the way of statistics for this era being in the aftermath of the terrible starvation and destitution, it seems reasonable to assume that it would have been at least equally as tame as the preceding pandemic, if not significantly less deadly again!

This is supported by the fact that by the time the last major pandemic wave of 1866 hits Ireland, deaths from Cholera have declined significantly again, even compared to that of the later 1840s. After a brief period of deadly eruption, by the turn of the 20th Century, Cholera is heard of no more.

This pattern is mirrored across our industrialised nations, which we will review shortly. But, first, we will revisit the major pandemics that reverberated around the western world but originating in the eastern regions a little earlier - impacting our respective nations as summarised in the following.

Comparing and Contrasting Social, Political, and Medical Reactions to 19th Century Cholera

Epidemics in London and New York City

Cholera is an infectious and fatal disease, which first appeared in India in 1817.

It spread th[r]ough Asia and the Middle East in the 1820s, to Moscow and Europe in 1830, and by early 1832, the disease had reached London and Paris. In June 1832, cholera crossed the Atlantic Ocean and traveled down from Quebec to New York City arriving on June 24 of that year.

Four primary pandemics arose in 1831, 1848, 1853, and 1866 in London and New York City, which produced various methods to control the disease.

Harning, L. N., (2015, Introduction)

[9]

These major pandemic waves correspond directly with those recorded for Ireland and, indeed, her closest neighbours as outlined in the next excerpted study.

Cholera as a ‘sanitary test’ of British cities,

1831–1866

Cholera invaded Britain four times (in 1831/2, 1848/9, 1854 and 1866), however after 1849 mortality was focussed on London...

Davenport, R. J., Satchell, M., & Shaw-Taylor, L. M. W.

(2018, Chapter 3: The geography of cholera mortality in the nineteenth century)

[10]

Interestingly, the fact that the penultimate (and third wave) Cholera pandemic to hit England was centred in London as indicated in the above excerpt - does this imply that the rest of the wider population were left relatively unscathed? We will return to this London-centered outbreak of 1854 shortly.

Now, reviewing these same pandemic waves to hit Ireland, when we drill down to statistical detail, it looks like Ireland compared to her closest neighbours suffered significantly greater losses judging by the overall available mortality statistics from these regions.

This becomes clear when we review Charles Creighton's (1894) comprehensive study which, tabulates the recorded number of deaths from Cholera during each pandemic wave from Scotland, England/Wales and London as reproduced in Davenport et al 2018, Table 2, [11] (See Table 1).

For instance, the mortality statistics given for Scotland, with a broadly comparable population to Ireland, shows Ireland's neighbour got off fairly lightly by comparison.

Focussing on England and Wales, these regions experienced their worst recorded outbreak of Cholera in terms of deaths - not so much in the first wave with deaths from Cholera recorded as 21,882, but, during the second pandemic wave of 1848/9 of just over 50,000 deaths (Table 1).

Now considering that these figures (c. 50,000 and 46,000 deaths) for each of our respective region's greatest mortality recorded from Cholera during this broader pandemic era (whether it be in the first and worst outbreak for Ireland or the second and worst for England and Wales less than two decades later) are not that different, however, when we factor in our respective population sizes for this era. Ireland having a significantly smaller population than that of England and Wales, we can, therefore, perhaps say that in terms of mortality caused by Cholera, the Irish nation felt Cholera's deadly impact a whole lot more than of her immediate neighbours.

Moving on into the third wave to hit England and Wales, Table 1 shows that after this second wave Cholera pandemic of 1848/9, the number of deaths drop dramatically to less than half by the third pandemic wave of 1853/4 (this steep decline continues into the fourth and final wave of 1866) (Table 1).

Table 1: Adapted from tabulations given in Davenport, R. J., Satchell, M., & Shaw-Taylor, L. M. W. (2018, Table 2) Original data source: (Creighton, 1894, p. 816, 821). [ibid].

London is interesting as seen in the mortality statistics presented in Table 1, in terms of the proportional death-toll from Cholera starting in the first pandemic wave of 1831/2 to that recorded for the rest of England and Wales by the second and worst pandemic wave of 1848/9 where London sees almost a three-fold increase in its mortality compared to the two-fold increase felt across the rest of England and Wales during the same attack.

Now, as the overall number of deaths drop significantly by the third (penultimate) pandemic wave of 1853/4, this is felt the least within this great metropolitan centre, as the deaths in London account for more than half of the total number of those recorded for all of England and Wales combined during this penultimate (third) and significantly lesser Cholera wave.

In the end, by the last pandemic wave of 1866, the London mortality figures return to more natural proportions concerning the rest of the nation (almost 5,600 individual number of deaths are recorded) (Table 1).

It is perhaps within this context that we should review the following now-famous story that is linked directly to this London-centered Cholera outbreak of 1854 and to the genesis of our efforts to stop the bug in its tracks.

John Snow and the Broad Street Pump: On the Trail of an Epidemic

The first cases of cholera in England were reported in 1831, about the time Dr. Snow was finishing up his medical studies at the age of eighteen… Dr. Snow believed sewage dumped into the river or into cesspools near town wells could contaminate the water supply, leading to a rapid spread of disease. In August of 1854 Soho, a suburb of London, was hit hard by a terrible outbreak of cholera. Dr. Snow himself lived near Soho, and immediately went to work to prove his theory that contaminated water was the cause of the outbreak...

Officials contended there was no way sewage from town pipes leaked into the pump and Snow himself said he couldn’t figure out whether the sewage came from open sewers, drains underneath houses or businesses, public pipes or cesspools. The mystery might never have been solved except that a minister, Reverend Henry Whitehead, took on the task of proving Snow wrong.

… Reverend Whitehead interviewed a woman, who lived at 40 Broad Street, whose child who had contracted cholera from some other source. The child’s mother washed the baby’s diapers in water which she then dumped into a leaky cesspool just three feet from the Broad Street pump, touching off what Snow called the most terrible outbreak of cholera which ever occurred in this kingdom.

A year later a magazine called The Builder published Reverend Whitehead’s findings along with a challenge to Soho officials to close the cesspool and repair the sewers and drains because in spite of the late numerous deaths, we have all the materials for a fresh epidemic. It took many years before public officials made those improvements.

Tuthill, K., (2003)

[12]

This, now famous story of the Broad Street Pump is often heralded as the ultimate triumph of our public health efforts in combating the bug - thus, crediting ourselves with the decline in deaths from Cholera as a result.

However, going against this widely perceived scenario, as documented above, is the fact that it took years for the public health officials to actually, get around to fixing the pump itself.

Furthermore, such sanitary efforts, as exemplified by the London suburb, when we did eventually begin implementing them, were often isolated and urban-centred reforms themselves and conversely, the greatest impact of the disease was, for the most part, felt within the greater urbanised centres much more than across the rest of our respective populations.

Moreover, it would be difficult to credit any of these sanitary interventions that didn't even begin to emerge until several years after the 1853/4 with the great decline in deaths that were already shown to have plummeted almost universally by the final pandemic wave of 1866.

Take, for example, within a place like Ireland, Ireland probably had other things on its mind than implementing any sanitation reforms in the aftermath of the Great Irish Famine coinciding with the third and penultimate wave of Cholera in 1854.

This brings us to another historically pertinent case that as the title of the following article excerpt suggests, runs counter to the Miasma theory of disease, disputing the idea promoted by certain characters championing the sanitation reform movement, i.e., the belief that if we could clean up our act; we could eradicate the bug.

This following case is much less-known than our Broad Street Pump incident, but,